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My schedule is pretty hectic (that’s the way I like it!) and that requires me to be on top of things when it comes to fitting meals into my day. One of my tricks for doing so is to always have one of these bad boys on hand.

The original recipe is good on its own but I like to use natural peanut butter which means that mine come out drier. To compensate, I like to add about a teaspoon of non-hydrogenated coconut oil, milk, and honey (if you use sweetened milks like vanilla soy or rice milk then I would omit the honey) to make the bars a little softer.

Once they’ve cooled for a few hours and have formed a solid bar I like to cut them into 1″x 4″ pieces. Then I wrap each bar diagonally in a 5″x5″ square of wax paper. You can store the whole batch in the fridge for up to 2 weeks although they start to dry out again after about 5 days.

You can also add more things to them if you want to mix it up a bit: raisins, dried fruit, different chocolate chips, flavored extracts, or chopped up nuts.

I started a new job this week that requires me to be out of the door by 7:45am and gone until 8 or 9pm. That’s all the impetus needed to get me kicked into chef mode. Last Sunday I spent 2 hours meal planning, grocery shopping, and prepping meals for the week and it’s paying off well.

There are a few pros to this:

– eating healthier- I tend to eat well when I’m the one preparing the food

– wasting less- I plan the meals to use off all of the leftovers from the other meals, which also means…

– saving money- since I’m using ingredients more efficiently and not having to buy snacks or meals while I’m out.

All in all using a menu planner works out well for me, and the money I save on not eating out more than makes up for the time it takes for me to prep everything on Sunday.

I seem to be the only one in my office who brings multi-component lunches daily. Is that the case in your office? Do you already bring your lunch? Hopefully this can serve as a dialogue for sharing recipes and tips for not getting bogged down in the mechanics of having to add an extra task to your schedule each week.

Each week I’ll be posting a recipe, snack idea, or meal planning/prep tip that I use to make some pretty fabulous lunches. Starting as soon as I take some pictures that aren’t in a break room!